Dark clouds, cool breeze, the silhouette of giant mountains watching you around, songs of cicadas amidst the silence of woods, talks of Irula tongue coming across from the nearby village is the night world I live in these days at Keystone Field ecology Centre, Satyamangalam. There sitting in the porch when I am seeing through the hanging leaves off the branches of glittering trees, there peeps in a glow from the dark clouds ‘Moon’ in its sparkling white. An emanating source of joy, a wonderful company soothing my mind, rising my heart to muse with nature and sing the song of winds.

When I am in whole enjoying the light from the hallowed moon in the sky above, so cool and yet strong unlike the light which is illuminating my room now, I see a faint shimmer of light so much noticeable that you can’t stop noticing it. Flying once here and once there adding to the beauty of the night which no LED light set can beat. By now the guess should be in your mind, of what I am speaking of. If not, these Innocent, harmless glimmering dots of light given the fiery name of fireflies are the creatures I am intending to introduce.

I hope at least few would link it to some soft memories glowing in mind. For me, it leads to the days of my childhood, where getting the firefly into a matchbox used to be a teamwork of cousins together and then think to leave it into the nest of a bird, where it may act as a lamp post. Though not too many years back, there used to be a time when the only light one could witness in the pristine nature spots would be showers of moonlight and sparkles of stars, at least when power was cut. In that mild light of cool night in the fringes of the forest of Bhadra, at my aunt’s home far away from the clumsy city, fireflies would instigate the curiosity and fancy imaginations. Now I feel the same seeing them around.

Creatures of beauty and glow indicate the health of the nature around us, as they can survive in a place clean from chemical toxins and pollution of light. Also, they predate on the larvae of slugs and snails acting as a pest in farms, fields and keep the number in check. The faint light which glows in them signals the mating process and completes the cycle of reproduction and if this signal is blocked, the whole cycle gets imbalanced.

Though it is not proved in entirety, artificial light, bright and sharp bears the burden of making these simple brilliant life to go away searching the darkness, where only moon above plays its role and in that romantic light they enact their mission of reproduction.

Here, words of Buzz Aldrin finds apt, “Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I’m on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding – yet beautiful – Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space”.

I wish that let not the shine of the shining planet cross the threshold where the shine becomes so sharp to make eyes of humanity blind to the beauty around, where even small creatures are valued and embraced. Better the moon above always remind us of the beauty of nature and preciousness of its work rhyming with time.